Oftentimes, you have a DateTime object that you want to render in your template. However, the default
rendering (2008-01-01T01:23:45) is pretty ugly. Formatting the DateTime with a DateTime::Format object
is the usual solution, but there's usually not a nice place to put the formatting code.
This plugin solves that problem. You can create a formatter object from within TT and then use that
object to format DateTime objects.
CREATINGANOBJECT
Creating a formatter instance is done in the usual TT way:
[% USE varname = DateTime::Format( ... args ... ) %]
This creates a new formatter and calls it "varname".
The constructor takes up to three arguments. The first argument is the name of the formatter class. It
is required, and the named class must follow the DateTime::Format API. An exception will be thrown if
the class cannot be loaded.
The second argument is a reference to pass to the formatter's constructor. If it is an array reference,
the array will be dereferenced before being passed to "new" as @_. Otherwise, the single reference is
passed to the constructor.
The third argument is optional and is the rest of @_ to pass to "format_datetime" after the DateTime
object. I don't know if this is actually allowed by the API, but I figured it might come in handy.
FORMATTINGDATES
Once you've created the object, invoke the "format" method with the DateTime object you'd like to format.
The result of "format_datetime" is returned.